Some Blog Site

Subtitle: in which I improve the government’s records

Allow me to introduce to you the 2011 SFS Baby Name List. Some of you may recall that I like to take the Social Security baby name list and reorganize it so that a name is counted only once even if it is spelled different ways. It is that time again, this time it’s the names from 2011.

For yet another year, Jacob is NOT the most popular boy’s name in the US – Aiden is. Rather, the name that is pronounced the same as Aiden is the most popular boy’s name in 2011.

Some Stats

• The top 4 names for the boys are the same as 2010 (the government got the top two names wrong).
• The top 3 names for the girls are the same as 2010 (the government got the top two names right).
• William went up in popularity, as I predicted last year.
• Same thing with Catherine/Katherine. More people spell it with a ‘K’, but the Duchess of Cambridge spells hers with a ‘C’. Both variations increased by about the same amount.
• William is the highest-ranked boy’s name that has no spelling variations.
• Girl names still have more spelling variations than boy names (319/1000 vs. 229/1000 alternates)
• The boys still have the name with the highest number of alternate spellings (Jayden/Aiden with 9 vs. Hailey/Carly with 8)
• The girls had more new variations added this year. For example: Braelyn/Braelynn, Samiya/Samiyah, and Sloan/Sloane for the girls. Also for example: Bentlee was new, as was Johan/Johann for the boys.

2011 Improved Baby Name List

Click on the link above and peruse to your heart’s content!

Before I start this recap of how I installed my ROFL, I should inform you that ROFL stands for Reverse Osmosis FiLter.

Some of you may recall that we had an iron filter installed several weeks ago. That improved the general quality of the water, but I wanted to ensure that I wouldn’t need to buy bottled water anymore.

So I bought a reverse osmosis filter.

The whole system was about $170. Since bottled water is $5 per case of 24 and we went through about a case a week, it will take 34 weeks to break even. Plus I won’t have to lug those cases home from the store, and I won’t have to take the recycling out every week.

The installation is easy, in theory. When you’re dealing with an old house, nothing goes quite as simply as you hope.

On to the tutorial:

This post will tell you how to install a reverse osmosis filter. Or rather, how I installed mine.
(more…)

Intro to Our Water Problems

Our water softener was hurting. It still worked, kind of. It was going through salt like normal, but the water was tasting worse and worse. Salty-ish, in fact.

My wife refused to drink the water, so we were going through dozens of cases of bottled water from Costco. It finally got to me too. When you have to spit out any water that gets in your mouth during your shower, you know something’s not right. So I talked to some people, and got referred to my local hardware store.

I filled up an empty water bottle (we had lots of those available) with our hose water (from before the softener) and took it to the store. The manager guy took it in the back to test it. It took him quite a while.

When he finally came back, he told me that he tested it twice because the numbers were off the chart and he didn’t believe the first test.

Fixing Our Water

For those who are interested: our water has an iron content of 3.5 and a hardness level of 67. I forget the units on those numbers, but I think the hardness involved grains.

The store manager said they had an iron filter that would help, but he wanted the water treatment specialist (and installer) guy to look at our system in person so he could make sure nothing else was wrong. Maybe he thought we connected the water softener backwards or something.

The water treatment guy came out and tested our water. He hadn’t believed the store manager’s results either. Sure enough, he got the same result. Our well was fine and the rest of our system was fine. It’s just the groundwater in our area is very hard. Based on his assessment, we got an iron filter from the store and he installed it.

It cost around $700, but it was well worth it.

Get it? Well worth it…

Ahem.
(more…)

The passenger-side mirror of our van has been cracked for a while – not just the mirror part but also the plastic housing. The housing had some sharp edges, so I wrapped it in some black duct tape after it tore a hole in one of my better T-shirts.

After over a year of driving around with the mirror in that state (what? it was still mostly functional…) I decided to replace it. Why now? Because we had a couple of vacations that required some driving, and it would be a good time for that.

I had inquired about getting it replaced, but the dealership quoted over $100 (I forget exactly, $150 maybe?). I figured that, since I could still use the broken mirror and it wasn’t legally required anyway, why blow $150 on it? I could buy a mirror and try to install it myself. The total that way would be $50.

How long does it take to replace a side mirror? I took me about an hour. But I was staging photographs and noting things. If you skip those parts, it would have been 40 minutes. And if you skip the unnecessary steps, then it should take you 30 minutes.

The Replacements

Here are the 8 steps, with helpful photos, I took to replace the mirror on my 2005 Dodge Grand Caravan:
(more…)

Allow me to introduce to you the 2010 SFS Baby Name List. Some of you may recall that I like to take the Social Security baby name list and reorganize it so that a name is counted only once even if it is spelled different ways. It is that time again, this time it’s the names from 2010.

The government, being on its own timetable, released the numbers for 2010 a couple months ago. They’re getting better though. It used to take them months to compile the list. Now it takes them weeks. And if I had known when the list was being released, I would have had this post done back then.

Some Stats

• The top 3 names for the boys are the same as 2009.
• Sophia and Isabella swapped spots for the girl names from 2009.
• William went down in popularity, but I suspect the royal wedding will cause a spike in that name for next year’s results.
• Same thing with Catherine/Katherine. More people spell it with a ‘K’, but the Duchess of Cambridge spells hers with a ‘C’.
• Girl names still have more spelling variations than boy names (323/1000 vs. 236/1000 alternates)
• The boys still have the name with the highest number of alternate spellings (Jayden/Aiden with 10 vs. Hailey/Carly with 8)
• Popular boy names end in ‘n’ (the first 7 variants); popular girl names end in ‘y’ (the first 2 variants).
• ‘Skylar’ is still a girl’s name and ‘Skyler’ is still a boy’s name. (’a’ vs. ‘e’, in case you didn’t catch it).

2010 Improved Baby Name List

Click on the link above and peruse to your heart’s content!

Some of you may recall the adjusted (by combining alternate spellings) baby name lists that I put together not too long ago.

I have added another section to that site – Top Names of the Decade, for each decade from 1900 until now.

Go there and click on a decade (e.g. The 1930s) for the top 25 most popular names, as well as which names gained or lost the most ground over the decade.

I recently finished a project and tried a new (to me) product: combination stain and polyurethane in a single can.

It worked as advertised, but I’m not a fan. This happened to be PolyShades by Minwax, but I’m guessing that I wouldn’t like any stain-and-poly-together-in-one product by anybody.

The problem is that the simplicity takes away your ability to manage the shade of the stain.

In other words, you can’t keep sanding and applying poly to get a smoother, deeper finish, because each application results in more (i.e. darker) stain.

Here is what it looked like with zero, one, and two coats:

It turned out okay, but there were some spots that were rougher than I wanted, but I didn’t want to add more stain. And there were some spots where the stain had pooled and made the finish obviously darker than the surrounding areas, but I didn’t want to wipe off the poly.

I suppose it’s a fine product if you don’t care much about the finish. I didn’t think I would care as much as I did, but not having the ability to adjust little things frustrated me.

Go with separate stain and clear coat.